The magnificent 7 met at the school gates and looked pretty dodgy, loitering around and 'dealing' in banana bread and strong tea. Refueled, we were briefed to clear out the dead material from 2 borders and 4 planters , at the reception of the school. Just one question - how do you tell what's dead and what's alive?! With the usual GG garden knowledge we set to, pulling out what we thought had died off, plus the weeds and soggy leaves. Amy W helped us out with her superior plant wisdom: 'It looks weed-ish!' Nicki and Michael did a great job of scooping out some soupy pot gloop , and re-homing 2 plants. Just like Alan Titchmarsh and his team, we sprinkled wood chip between all the remaining plants and everything looked champion.
Hope the school give us an A* on Monday morning!

Today's tiny forest tasks included: spreading woodchip onto the circular path, weeding and removing grass, transporting compost from many mini heaps into the newly constructed compost heap, and emptying said compost heap to allow it to be finished off, before refilling. We also carried up another dozen bags of mulch for later use. A busy morning!

Rich and Michael enthusiastically volunteered for the compost heap, expecting to be let loose with hammers and nails, but had to be content with turning out compost and shredding cardboard for a while first. Once they'd been sufficiently Good, they were allowed to smash things with a sledgehammer and finish off construction.

Lucy, Claire (1) and Alistair were battling with the grass that was enjoying our forest's lovely compost, Claire (2) and I took on the mini heaps, and everyone else spread loads of woodchip, and carried more up. Babs also got to pose next to the first ever tree planted in the forest, just about 1 year ago.

Once we were all done, most of us headed to a new cafe, The Kitchen Osbaldwick for a very yummy lunch, before some headed straight on to task 3 of the day.

Having noticed on previous outings that the unofficial carpark where we meet for the Tiny Forest is always very littery, we arranged a pre-forest litterpick.

I arrived early to complete my (walking cos I'm injured) hill reps, and had almost filled a bag before most people arrived, the litter was that bad! Soon the full team was out picking, including newbie Claire who turned up with her own brand new (and very fancy) litter picker, which made us all a little jealous!

Clearly this is a spot to come drinking, especially if you're a fan of Budweiser or Aspinall's. If only they were also a fan of taking their cans home at the end, not chucking them into a bramble hedge. Still, we were not defeated, and no bramble was left unturned.

After 45 minutes we had filled a whopping 14 bags full, so carried these all over to the nearest litter bin, and informed the council they'll be needing a bigger truck! On most of us went to the next task, pleased we had left the area looking far nicer.